ZINE: Holiday, now

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FEAST: Holiday, Now celebrates
the Royal College of
Art’s 1st year Painting students’
personal narratives,
practices and visions in response
to this year’s holiday
season.
Providing a peek behind the
scenes at our community as it
continues to develop through
lockdowns and webcams, these
pages aim to offer a broader
acknowledgement of the festive
season through the lens of our
practices. Aside from cheer and
merriment - or indeed instead
of them - “holiday” feelings
may well include loneliness,
reunion, darkness, warmth,
mourning, love, introspection
or reflections on the year that
passed.
Sending love, from all of us to
you.
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Kate Howe _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Anna Blom _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Abigal Hampsey _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Konstantinos S. Argyroglou Argyropoulos ______________________________________________________________
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Qinhua Li __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Haeji Min ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Yichu Shi ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Oda Iselin Sønderland ___________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Hanne Peeraer___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Sarah-Athina Nahas ________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Emily Kraus ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Pia Ortuño _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Tami Soji-Akinyemi ________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Li Hei Di ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Pippa El-Kadhi Brown ___________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Sophia Loeb ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Georg Wilson ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Emma Stone-Johnson _____________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Cecilia Ulfsdotter Klementsson _________________________________________________________________________________
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Emma Prempeh ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Grace Tobin ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Emily Gillbanks _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Sofia Nifora ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Jo Dennis ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Lara Davies _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Adam Smith _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Yuewan Chen ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Katarina Caserman _________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Aoibhin Maguire ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Nora Neagoe _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Cas Campbell ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Jiahui Hou _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Kashin Patel ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Cho Hui-Chin __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Albano Hernández __________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Kate Howe – from her living room studio during lockdown 2.0, with Beautiful
Crucible, 82” x 82” oil, oil pastel, and pencil on oil paper. This image
celebrates Eee, Kate’s older child, who is also in London studying Drama.
Kate Howe
London
Dec 4, 2020
Family is a floating raft of hope, it
comes together like mercury droplets
and scatters when pressed and
pulled. It exists always, maybe just
in the network of crinkled eye edges
peeking over your masked face, maybe
in someone offering you a caring
ear, maybe in someone extending the
offer of a place to crash when all hope
seems lost.
My family is not defined by blood
or birth but by hope and help. My
family includes people I’ve only met
once in person, sometimes people I
am family with are not family even to
my closest family. My family surprises
me, sometimes I realize I am in a
family with a person who I did not
even know was family.
I am family with a woman in Australia,
a man in Wyoming,
a father in New York,
a friend in Modesto,
a pack of feral ski bums in Aspen,
a lone man on a mountain in Santiag
o ,
a woman in Futelefu,
a mountain in Japan.
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I am family with a disenchanted yogi
and a depressed mountaineer. I am
family with insane pilots and audiophiles
and writers and musicians and
painters and horse lovers, a nurse,
several artists, some financiers. In all
there is a through-line: I am family
by contract of compassion.
I am family with a pack of children
who live in an undetermined place
in Cambodia, and another group of
young dedicated playful slackliners
outside Mysore, also living in indeterminate
and dangerous homes, their
families are folded into ours, ours
into theirs over tea on the floor and
laughs in the open park and struggle
and joy and tear tracks making rivers
of resilience on faces as we hold each
other, rocking from a shock, or rocking
from a laugh. This is family.
These connections spark over not a
transactional exchange of goods for
services but through the endless extension
of help and compassion, each
person giving all they can afford to
give to the other while still being
aware of their own capacity to give.
This family is defined by its ability to
hold healthy boundaries while looking
outside of itself for opportunities
to extend care. Our currency is love,
time, listening, letters.
We express our care for one another
sometimes every day, sometimes once
a month, sometimes once every three
years, but we are family nonetheless.
Sometimes, I am family with the family
of my friends. I am family with the
sister of my ex-lover. I’ve only met her
once, but she is my family. We don’t
have names for these relationships,
I don’t know if what I feel, which is
deeper than love, and longer than
friendship, and more important than
title, is sister, brother, mother, father,
and it doesn’t matter. These special
relationships don’t happen with
every person. They are rare. They require
investment and trust and vulnerability,
and the gift of one family
member may take the pain of several
broken hearts to arrive at. But this
is how you know you’ve found family.
Family you can argue with, family
stays intact: the foundation of the
relationship is more important than
the personal need to be right. Family
overcomes ego. Sometimes roughly.
Sometimes painfully. But always
together.
When I traveled through Southeast
Asia and India over the course of several
years with my children, who were
9 and 11 when we started, respectively,
we used to call these people our
“Omies”. We found our “Omies” because
we were floating in the global
river of yoga teacher trainings, where
I made my living as a bodyworker and
yoga assistant.
Along the way, we met people who
folded us into their families, generously.
They offered support, love,
affection, protection, safety, security,
meals, hugs, love, places to sleep,
places to cry, opportunities to burst
and expand, and risk and love. They
omed with us at the end of practice.
These then were Other Mothers. Omies.
People who should my kids ever feel
the need to run away from home
would be good landing hearts for my
children to escape to. My children
who I assumed would be as wildly
itchy-footed and poorly behaved as
I myself am and always have been.
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To that design, we sought out connection
around the globe, loving until an
Omie presented itself, and loving on in
gratitude. Omies aren’t only women, by
the way. We have a lovely Omie in Utah
who is a cranky man in his seventies who
couldn’t be anything other than family to
us. They are just family. A safe harbor. A
sense of home in a mercurial and often
vicious world. Our family is not defined
by age, gender or race. Our family is defined
by a deep web of networked compassion.
Our family includes a monk in Bayakulpe,
A rickshaw driver in Mysore
a teacher in South Africa
a yoga student who died in April of a heart
attack, a mountain of a man, an Australian
rugby player who loved motorcycles
and throwing the boys across the pool in
India on our day off from training. The
loss is as deep as the loss of any family
member would be. He hath borne them
on his back a thousand times, and now he
is gone... but he is still our family.
To that end, the family of our family is
our family. One of my family members
lost his wife of sixty-seven years.
I met him, because his son is in my family.
The loss of one so dear to both of
them made the absent space where she
belonged crystallize into a family member,
a living, breathing memory, a sacred
space.
2020 has of course brought with it the
most extraordinary challenges most of
us have ever faced. Coming strong on the
heels of three years of cancer and pain,
the loss of my ability to perform my job
as an adventure guide on rock, snow, ice,
motorcycles, bikes, trekking and art going,
my crumpled husk was on a mattress
on the floor in the back room of our small
cabin in Aspen for a long time.
I did not see my Omies during this pre-
COVID darkness. But they were there.
They sent messages; they were patient.
There were many days when I felt I was
taking more than I could give, and they
would remind me, this is not a transactional
relationship. This is love. My traditional
family is as bizarre perhaps as
my Family, and those who we are closest
to we are often physically farthest from
as my body healed again and the need to
learn drove us onward in search of further
immersive education. Our family helped
us get here. They helped with emails of
encouragement, with sweat and effort,
with financial support. Each gave as they
could. We are here because of our family.
The journey to London was its own Crucible,
launched as it was in the middle of
the Pandemic, and landing us in a place
and time where the world felt very cold
and dark, angry and isolated. We had no
Omies in place in London. Acquaintances,
yes. People who could and would be
there should the illusion that we were safe
and secure come crashing down… no.
And then the extraordinary happened
again. A friend we had met once, in Koh
Samui as she traveled through for an
Omie’s wedding appeared on our doorstep,
children waiting in the car: a holdall
with kale from her garden, herbs, a bottle
of wine, and a Sainsbury’s account
set up for us so we could have groceries
delivered whilst in quarantine. We had
no bank account, and COVID made the
wait for one weeks long. She, this angel
of compassion, helped. The effort it cost
her was not inconsiderable, but the impact
it had on us was immeasurable.
It is hard, as we realize we are becoming
family with this beautiful troop, not to
continuously ask, how can I ever repay
you? And to my friends who are helping
me set up a studio in London. How? How
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can I ever repay you for helping me to do
the one thing I need to get in place in order
to see if I can leap this hurdle? Where
would I be without my slingshot?
Because family isn’t a transactional relationship,
because it is just love, and
family, I remember to repay this debt of
compassion to everyone I can, and in doing
so, hopefully “repay” my family who
extended so much love to us that we flew
on their wings all the way to safety in
London.
I extend that love to my fellow students in
RCA, many of whom are struggling as they
aren’t in London and are on a painting
program from China, or from Australia.
They tune into zoom at 3 am for our critiques,
they are so isolated, and so alone.
“Hi, I can’t believe you are awake. Thank
you so much for sharing your work.” I
type into the zoom chat in a private message.
We continue to talk, she shares her
despondency, she says she feels lifted up
by connecting, we promise to meet on
Circle, our community platform, put in
place by another one of us, weathering
the storm in a huddle on the deck of the
good ship Remarkable: RCA’22.
Every Saturday that we can, we meet up
with our new Omies in London, we walk
in Richmond Park, or Bushy Park or Kew
Gardens, we go for a “stomp” with this
new arm of our London family. And we
all feel renewed. There is no expectation
for sparkling conversation, there is a full
relief from phones, emails, deadlines,
budgets, fear, finance, tuitions, evolutions,
and personal growth. We kick the
grass and draw the leaves and laugh at the
ducks.
There’s tea in a thermos and the twoyear-old
asleep with his toy elephant after
running pink-cheeked behind his older
brother. My kids play swords with sticks
around the pond. We are all suspended
in a time and the pressures retreat.
While walking in the woods was always
a pleasure we loved, these moments are
so precious, and so essential to the sense
of family, that my son even sends me videos
from his walks around the campus of
his school. Though he’s only been out on
one stomp with his newly extended family,
they are his as well, we are connected
by the web of compassion and trust. His
relief is ours, ours is his, together, we are
family.
Here is wishing all of you a sense of family,
wherever you can find it this holiday
season. To noticing the things that make
you feel whole, even for a moment, the
moments of relief, of expansiveness, the
moments of silliness, to the smaller meal
and to the people walking past your window
– they are just family you haven’t
met yet.
Here’s to family.
Much love,
Kate - and family.
My son Bodhi, floating on a cloud of Omies in
Mysore, India 2014
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Our London Omies on our last Stomp in Bushy Park, November 2020

Kate Howe is an American artist living and working in London. She is the author
of the blog Skiing in the Shower and of the forthcoming book The Drop-In Yogi
as well as several volumes of poetry and other fiction. Kate holds a degree in Art
History from Arizona State University, and a degree in Technical Theatre from
Foothill College. Kate’s work was most recently exhibited at the Aspen Art Museum
in Colorado, where she was also a resident artist at the Red Brick Center for
the Arts. Kate intends to pursue her Ph.D. in London following the completion of
her current MA at the Royal College of Art. Her forthcoming show, Invisible Effort
opens at The Asylum in Peckham on February 12, 2021.
My work looks at the intersection of subjectivity and temporality as impacted
by social relativity. Approaching the image from a perspective of poiesis, and
being realized in sound, installation, painting, drawing, film, photography, performance,
and writing, the work focuses on allowing essential self-truths to seep
through ruptures which occur in social time whenever a trauma occurs. These
ruptures are essential to becoming, and a deeper sense of subjectivity, though the
becoming is at once torturous and beautiful.
Materiality is incredibly important as a sensual element in my work: layers of
thick shiny honey-like medium, paint thinned too far and breaking and floating,
surfaces interrupting each other and bleeding and melding into one another, the
quality of the paper... use of pollution, use of space, use of sound. Each choice of
material seeks to deepen the immersive affective space owned by the work, interrogating
the subject/object relationship further.
Instagram: @katehowestudios
Website: www.katehowe.com
Facebook: facebook.com/katehowe
Email: kate@katehowe.com
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Anna Blom
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Touch. Protection. Hope. Will it be enough, acrylic, charcoal, on unstretched canvas, 182 x 150 cm, 2020.
Anna Blom is a Swedish interdisciplinary
artist based in London.
My work is an autobiography.
A continuous narrative of my immediate environment.
Seeing the fragile details that weave the baseline of our dailiness.
A quest to look at how the ordinary can unify us.

from sketchbook: Fragmented moments
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Instagram: @annabloominghell
Website: www.bloominghell.com
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Abigal Hampsey
Originally from Lancaster in the
north west of England, Abi uses
a multitude of narratives from
memories of home, literature,
north west folklore, the everyday
and personal experience as a lense
to explore the interconnected nature
of things. Although primarily
concerned with oil painting,
Abi also works with printmaking,
analogue photography, drawing
and storytelling.
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The Magpie and me
He says he hates them,
I’ve caught him saying a few choice words into the springtime air.
He says “the bastards!”
When for the third time in three years they took the nesting black birds eggs.
They didn’t even eat them
They, were just lifeless on the grass
“A bloody waste” he’d say
That’s just nature I would think
Catch him on a cold October morning
wading through the orange reds and trees
He’d say “Good morning Mr magpie, and where’s your wife?”
He’d take off his hat in solemn respect and salute him,
The being he seemingly hated so much!
Two for joy however and they wouldn’t get so much as a glance.
He would just glide by, safe in his superstitious graciousness of the previous day
That would protect him from the potential of Mr’s rath
Yet, for all his contempt and anger toward him
I think he’ll end up joining them,
And so when I see him alone, I too will salute
As if it where him,
For even if it isn’t him,
they are still:
a him
a her
a them
an us
a you.
But instead I will say:
Hello Bill, and how is your wife?
He would crawk in response no doubt
To thank me for asking
And I would smile and say, “Good! I’m glad to hear it”
safe in my own belief, his own being
and our shared encounter.
That we are alive we animate and we are equal.
Instagram: @ abihampsey
Website: www.abigailhampsey.com
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“this could be the...first last only”, photographs, 2020.
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Konstantinos S. Argyroglou Argyropoulos
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Konstantinos S. Argyroglou
Argyropoulos (b.1998) is
a Greek painter and artist.
Argyroglou completed his
Foundation Year at UCA in
Canterbury (2016-17) and
attended the University of
Westminster studying Fine
Art Mixed Media (2017-
20) in London, where he
achieved First Class Honours.
His works have been
exhibited in Athens and
London.
Visible Differences, oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm, 2020.

Christmas is a time of the year that feels very close to home, it is infused with warmth and memories.
This year Christmas feels different, it seems even more intimate, yet on a personal level. The notion
of sharing, which is so integral to this celebration, is challenged. With this in mind, I see my current
work as a way to be open about my childhood memories, my memorabilia from my school years and
my embodied memory that gradually materializes in these paintings and drawings. By dealing with
the issue of dyslexia, something so close to me, I aim to unpack myself and simultaneously provide a
caring sphere for all people that experience learning difficulties. Through drawing and painting with
oils I practice a slow process that brings me closer to my materials and deeper in my carnal memory.
Intimacy, closeness, warmth and inclusion lie at the core of this selection of works - I would love
to think that these holidays will be formed around these values creating a new way for sharing, not
necessarily through giving and hugging but through caring and understanding.
Instagram: @ kons1an1inos
WIP, oil on canvas, 115 x 155 cm, 2020.
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Qinhua Li (b.1994), is a Chinese
painter and artist from whom
her Painting degree at the RCA
is her second MA. Her works
have been exhibited in China
and London in recent years.
Untitled, acrylic on paper, 35 x 32 cm, 2019.
Qinhua Li
Instagram: @ liqinhuali
Website: www.qinhuali.com
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She used her own cultural background
and identity as well as
her cognition of the outside
world to deconstruct the portraits
of specific characters and
create images without identity,
gender, or class. She also focuses
on the relationship between
individuals and society, history,
and explores the status quo
and survival of special times
and groups.

Untitled, chinese ink on paper, 35 x 70 cm, 2020.
“I don’t know, I don’t know why I like to say I don’t know,
I’ve handled a lot of things well, but I’ve been destroying them.
I keep thinking back to yesterday, the day before yesterday, last year,
even when I didn’t even know when to remember a childhood day.
I think I was getting deeper and deeper, I felt more and more strange.
I hear the sound of a new life. It draws me forward. Is it tomorrow or
a holiday?”
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The Teardrop on a Love-potion-Deja vu, oil color on canvas, 130.5 x 119cm, 2020.
Haeji Min (b. 1995) is a London
based South Korean artist. She
works and lives in London and
Seoul. In 2020, Min graduated
from University College London
(Slade School of Fine Art) in
BFA in Fine Art with first-class
honors. She exhibited her works
at The New Shoreditch Theatre
(2017), and in 2020 at the Biennale
Europeenne d’Art Contemporain
with Galerie Daniel
Vignal, Ashurst Emerging Artist
Award, and featured from
the publication CORONART by
Ludvig Rage Club.
When I flip the calendar and see December on the page, I immediately
fall into a holiday mood. As if we are opening a treat from a
Christmas advent calendar, the expectation and counting the days
closer to 25th December almost gives us greater joy than the actual
D-day. However, we might have an ambivalent feeling about starting
a new year. Especially this year, 2020, we all wish for the end
of the COVID era, but it’s not easy to ignore the thought of ‘what
if we can’t go back to the pre-COVID normal life.’
Your moods might inevitably depend on the news or people’s predictions
about ‘our’ future, but for this moment, just like we did
every year, write a bucket list of what you would like to achieve in
2021 and focus on your mind, shut the external noise. This painting
encourages you to travel around your mind and welcome the
endless open doors. It’s okay to feel depressed or uncertain about
the future, but be mindful not to be absorbed by the feeling of blue
because it can merely be an island in the vast ocean called life.
Instagram: @haejiminart
Website:www.whitneyzxma.wixsite.com/haejimin
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Haeji Min

Yichu Shi is a Chinese art-
ist who completed her BA at
Tianjing Academy of Fine Art
(2015-2019).
Instagram: @ shinnieshih
Yichu Shi
both Untitled, watercolour on paper, 18 x 18 cm, 2020.
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“Climbing for a long time, I finally went into the
depths of the pine forest. Thick pine needles piled up
on the ground. Only the fresh surface has a little dark
green. And underneath it, the pine needles were darker
brown, the dew inside them wet the shoes. The whole
pine forest made me feel so cold and heavy. After a few
seconds, sunshine is getting stronger and penetrating
through the pine trees. Soon I felt that the water under
layers of pine needles began to evaporate, fragrant
rosin mixed with the complex but light smell of earth.
In just a few minutes the whole pine forest became
very different and made me feel a sense of relief.”
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Oda Iselin Sønderland
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Med Vinden, watercolour on paper, 10 x 15 cm, 2020. (left)
Seeding, watercolour on paper, 35.5 x 30.5 cm, 2020.
I work with watercolor paintings, and lately also sculpture, depicting intimate
scenes of the interior, both physically and psychologically, as well
as scenes situated out in the open nature and forests. My work is filled
with symbols and clues, and with them I aim to give the viewer a moment
of wonder and curiosity, thinking of the body, sexuality and the organic.
These days my main focus is looking at our relationship with animals and
nature, which comes out in my work as mythical creatures and hybrids.
Instagram: @ odaiselin
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Untitled, pencil on tissue paper, A5, 2020.
Hanne Peeraer
Hanne Peeraer (b. 1998) is originally from
Belgium, grew up in Italy and is currently
living, studying and working in London.
Her ethereal drawings form a diagrammatic
never-ending exploration of intuition, networks
and nature. Investigating the ways in
which human perception and physiological
optics can be affected, her work combines
notions of subtlety and beauty with precision
and geometry.
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Instagram: @hanne_peeraer
Website:www.hannepeeraer.co.uk

“I’m trying to seize the fourth dimension of this instant-now, so fleeting that it’s already gone”
For my drawings, the evening of this year has meant a slowing down. A letting go of
understanding, an embrace of mystery, of trying to figure things out. We never stop
trying to figure things out. “I don’t know, and you don’t either.”

Bookpages, pencil and pen on tissue and tracing paper, A4, 2020.

Sarah-Athina Nahas
Once, twice, three times, ten times, thirty times, a
hundred times
I must’ve played that video
Between the times I would watch it, alone
disconcerted
and the times where I had nightmares about it
and the times where I imagined my parents disappearing
with it
and the other times where I imagined myself explode
crushed, mushed
like that woman, in denim shorts, driving her car,
with a face
that wasn’t one anymore
Yes, I would watch them all
The atrocious footage
Unbearable
I would watch them all
Once, twice, a thousand times,
to share a tenth of what my country must’ve suffered
It is the first time I can say I understand what it
means to not understand
Flashes, thick black smoke, then... BOUM
I didn’t understand
BOUM !
I don’t understand
BOUM !
My brain is not answering
BOUM !
My body dropped
Boum, boum, boum, boum
It is also the sound of my heart
It doesn’t change anything that I did not understand
It still happened
Violently, criminal, abject
Irreversible
Instagram: @sarahnahas
Website: www.sarah-athina.co.uk
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Sarah-Athina Nahas (b. 1995)
is a fine artist who grew up in
Lebanon and is currently living,
studying and working in
London.
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I dismember, assemble, and rearrange
parts of bodies, parts of myself; I see
the body as an internal landscape full
of potentiality and ultimately full of
beauty.
When thinking about blood, pus,
flesh, organs, and any bodily fluids,
we instantly consider them to be abject
things, repulsive parts of ourselves that
are better kept under the skin, buried,
forgotten.
By denying these essential components,
we deny an important part of what
makes us human, fragile, but also of
what truly connects us all together and
make us relatable to one another.
Empathy is the ability of putting oneself
in someone else’s skin, and this
ability is only made possible because of
one main common trait, the body. We
all have one that reacts more or less in
the same ways. It is specifically for this
forgotten “dirty reality” that I use the
lens of the body to talk about human
emotions. In other words, I show physiological
responses to bodily sensations
that I dig in daily experiences, interactions
and emotions.
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Drawings from sketchbook, mixed media on paper, 2020.

Emily Kraus (b.1995) is an American artist and painter. She received
her BA in Religious Studies from Kenyon College (2017) and
is currently living and working in London.
Emily Kraus
Kraus’ practice is influenced by the places and environments she
has navigated - including rural Ohio, monastic and vibrant India,
Madrid, and now, London. Her work draws from an instinctive and
spontaneous place, reflecting her experiences, intuitions and allowing
the subconscious to bleed through. The breath of the mountain,
a face in the mirror, a new feeling, an unexpected incident. Her
background in yoga and movements disciplines guides the dynamic,
gestural and kinetic qualities of her work, as well as her consideration
for attention, perspective and stillness.
Instagram: @emily_kraus_
Website: www.emily-kraus.com
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I have spent seven out of the last seventeen
months alone. It started before
the pandemic. After spending two years
working 40hrs a week at a physically
and mentally engaging job, I decided
that I needed to reset and re-enter
my own art practice by self-isolating
in my long dead grandparents’ house
for three months. It sounds far more
romantic than it was. I spent the first
six weeks lying on the couch watching
Love Island (my first foray into reality
TV watching – which, on reflection I
can attribute to deep feelings of loneliness
and needing the buzz of idiots
talking), doing a puzzle, cooking and
eating in an eight hour window, feeling
guilty about not being productive
and generally hating myself. I remember
sitting on the couch with my neck
craned toward the TV and getting a
sore neck depending on what side I was
on, so I had to remind myself to switch
sides of the couch every few hours to
stay balanced. Or switch to a chair…
yes it was really that many hours.
And then I stopped letting myself feel
guilty for wasting time. This revelation
was not a miraculous fix-all but slowly
I built a routine. Every morning I
did yoga, then went to the local coffee
shop to do some work on the computer
and engage in brief small-talk with
Frank, the shop owner, and when I returned
home, I had to go straight to
my studio space to work. Do not pass
go, do not collect $200—straight to
the studio. I would stay at the studio
until I lost the light and then I would
walk to the kitchen to make dinner,
watch some TV, go to sleep and the
day would begin again. It was simple
yet those small routines enabled me to
work. After about six weeks of this I
left isolation and returned to my life
in Madrid.
Six months later the pandemic hit in
full force and Madrid underwent one
of the strictest lockdowns in the world
for three months and I was stuck alone
in my apartment. It was almost like a
big joke. Haha you wanted isolation
so here you go! Three more months!
Obviously this time there were very
different circumstances: a pandemic,
thousands of people dying every day.
I remember hearing that the ice rink
in the IFEMA convention center (the
same location where I had visited the
ARCO art fair the previous month)
was being used as a morgue for the
makeshift hospital ward set up next
door. The other thing that was different
was that I was not alone in my isolation
this time. Well, yes, physically I
was alone in my house. But the rest of
the world was also in isolation which
meant that time did not move. Well,
time moved but no one had momentum.
And suddenly, I felt free of the
guilt that I had been riddled with the
previous summer. I realized how deeply
this anxiety was linked to time and
fearing that the world was moving on
without me.
Ironically, because of my previous intentional
isolation, I had unbeknownst
to me, trained for this lockdown. I had
practiced for it. So I began my routine
again. I taught yoga every morning
which meant I had to go to sleep at a
reasonable time each night. I cleaned
the house every Sunday. I had drinks
on the balcony with neighbors on
neighboring balconies. I did a puzzle,
made a painting of a giant strawberry,
read a lot of books, and listened to
even more podcasts. I learned how to
organize myself - something I had never
allowed myself time to do before.
39

After lockdown lifted, I returned to
the States and a few months later traveled
to London to begin at the RCA. A
couple weeks after arriving, we went
into another lockdown. This time I was
living in a friend’s empty house surrounded
by things that were both familiar
and foreign. It was a space that
was not my own yet I had full reign.
It was a space with hundreds of family
photos that were not my family. It
was a space that I could not get messy
with my art practice, so I took a lot
of baths. And in the bath, I looked at
myself in the faucet and found my inspiration.
I proceeded to spend hours
over the next couple weeks in the
bathtub painting and drawing my reflection
in the faucet. I got really close
so that my nose was almost pressed up
and my eyes screwed up. I played with
the different ways my eyes could perceive
the faucet. I examined it from
a few inches away so that I could see
my reflection in the taps. I squatted
a couple feet away and examined the
distortion of my body in the faucet. I
lay underneath the faucet and looked
up at it.
In my experience, the only way to survive
these types of isolation is to find
freedom within the confinement. Freedom
when you are not even allowed
to exit the house for exercise. Freedom
when the only person to talk to is
yourself or a 2D screen. And so I play
with perspective. I turn myself upside
down to see the world differently. I explore
the relationship between physical
positions (which are sometimes
painful) and the mark I make on the
page. I have never before been confident
enough in my mark-making to
do line drawings like those illustrated
here and now I am exploring the
style more and more through considerations
of position and speed. Part
of getting into this new style is that
uncomfortable physical positions necessitate
speed and this is a fast way
to draw. When you are physically uncomfortable
you do not care much how
your drawing looks, you just want to
finish it so you can get out of the position.
If you stay in any position too
long, it becomes uncomfortable (Buddhists
attribute this to suffering). And
so, I learned to be dynamic within the
confinement. To move when I needed
to move. To engage virtually or on the
phone when I needed to see people.
To stand on my head when I needed to
shift perspective.
I had my 25th birthday during the first
lockdown in Madrid. My yoga ladies
sent me flowers and I had a big Zoom
call with my friends all over the world
who had a cake delivered to my door.
I felt overwhelming love and support.
I am amazed by the people’s levels of
compassion and care. I have become
so good at being alone that I am in awe
of the human capacity for kindness.
People are stuck all over the world
isolated from their families and loved
ones during this holiday season. Our
world, tradition, and normality overturned.
Our expectation of what seems
the most core part of our calendar -
the marker of the end of a year and beginning
of a new one - is wiped away.
What can we do but wake up in the
morning, follow our routines and go
to sleep. “The only sure thing is that
there are twenty-four hours in a day.
The sun does not rise or set. You rise,
you set.” - Nevine Michaan
40

What does the faucet think of me?, pen on paper, all 30 x 21cm, 2020.
41

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Instagram: @piaortuno
Website: www.piaortuno.com

Pia Ortuño is a Costa Rican artist currently based in London. In
2019 she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of the University
of Costa Rica and traveled to Pietrasanta, Italy to work with marble
and bronze in the workshops of Jimenez Deredia.
Pia Ortuño
Ortuño’s view of the world through the mediation of opposites
merges with her current study of the development of time through
the materiality of surfaces. The circle, in the form of a vacuum,
is present in her work as a symbolic representation of the spherical
memory of the universe. Her practice develops across different
mediums and techniques in painting and sculpture.
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39
44

Night Squiggles, pen on paper, all 27 x 43 cm, 2020.
My nights got shorter and shorter and my
days longer.
Too long.
Every time I woke up in the darkness of
an unfamiliar room I felt my heart on the
sides of my neck and sweat in the palm of
my hands. I felt anxious and bad about the
fact that I was not painting, not sculpting,
not making.
My first nights in London during the self
isolation weeks were the most difficult
I had in a long time. Following the rush
transfer from Pietrasanta and the initial
exhaustion of travel, my body began to
miss the fatigue I felt after a long day’s
work in the workshops and the foundries.
More than the fatigue I missed making,
producing, feeling like I had a direction in
my work and a goal.
from my body in the form of scratches.
I call them night squiggles.
They began soothing my anxiety, teaching
that it was ok to sleep and rest. They began
revealing more to me about my state of
mind during times when I was vulnerable
and intimate, when I do not remember and
when I have less control.
Now, when I keep waking at night my body
searches for the sketchbook and pen. My
mind feels the ridges of the previous nights
and my hand immortalizes the moments in
time during the night when my head needed
relief.
Where does time go when we enter the vacuum
of dreams?
I was alone, in a room that could have been
anywhere in the world, socializing through
zoom and staring at the space that I had to
be careful not to damage.
My nights got shorter and shorter and my
days longer.
Too long.
In all the time I was awake I felt useless
and during the nights I felt bad about being
useless.
I began to take my sketchbook to bed. It
gave me the illusion that I was brainstorming
or producing on a smaller scale, preparing
for when I had the chance.
The experiment was simple. Every time I
woke up in the middle of the night with the
anxious feeling and the interminable sadness
I would draw. I drew nothing, or maybe
something that needed to be expelled
45

Do you mind if I (the artist) lie to you?
Do you mind if I (the artist) don’t tell you everything there is to know?
Do you mind if I (the artist) only tell/show you what I want you to
know/see?
Tami Soji-Akinyemi
My practice is slightly problematic in that it imitates propaganda processes
(and their power dynamics) to lead interpretation. : - /
This is an impossible task, obviously.
My tutor says keep to ‘power’ out if it.
I’m not there yet. I want my ‘propaganda’ (I define as agenda(ed) image)
to be covert and symbolic rather that statements and bold, red and
Russian (like the constructionism). To look safe : - /
Right now I’m playing with:
- the symbolism of ‘light’ emerging from a black/’dark’ bases/planes.
- the ordering of thresholds and transitionary spaces (places ripe for
manipulation mwhahhhahha) [promise I’m nice]
- de-clarification of image with captions/text
.
Its a bit vague at the moment but I think I’m getting somewhere slowly.
TamiSoji-Akinyemi
(b.1991) is a British-Nigerian
artist
based in London.
She graduated
with a Bachelors
in Fashion Design
from University for
the Creative Arts
(2014).
Both order and chaos in life’s minutia have a
paradoxical proximity to ‘truth’; and the visual
world is a space full of facades, baring deceptive
markings of the ‘real’. My practice explores the
exposure, reflections and propagation of micro
and macro forms of ‘propaganda’ which I define
more expansively than the political context as
‘agenda driven communication’. Current works
are exploring duality in the emergence of light
and its association with knowing.
46

Waiting, oil on canvas board, 35cm x 25cm, 2020.
47 Instagram: @tam_luwa

Chang Bai, oil on canvas, 160 x 143 cm, 2020.
Li Hei Di
Instagram: @plum_black_field
Website: www.liheidi.com
48

My recent work is about seduction,
desire and freedom;
everything around sex but little
to do with the bland action of
fucking. (but sometimes raw fucking
is okay too). I’m also interested
in the conflict between personal desire
and collective expectations; desperation
for love and intimacy
in a repressed environment.
I am currently on the search and in
the making of mundane but shockingly
sexually charged moments.
In a way these moments are anthropomorphic.
It’s like when a feeling is so intense,
it grows its own consciousness and crystallizes itself into a being.
Cindy, digital drawing, 2020.
Here are Chang Bai and Cindy, They are a couple.
Chang Bai exists on a giant raw duck cotton canvas, Cindy only
exists in the digital world.
Their love is very inconvenient.
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Fish, monoprint on paper, 21 x 29.7 cm, 2020.
Pippa El-Kadhi Brown
Pippa El-Kadhi Brown is a London based artist who
works primarily in oil paint. Her exploration of human
psychology is observed through our relationship with
domestic environments. She explores the home as a
conscious space that exists both physically and psychologically.
Belonging to a kaleidoscope of impressions,
her ideas are derived from memory, imagination and
perhaps most importantly, sensation.
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Pippa is currently working towards an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, where she
has been awarded the Ali H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award. Her solo exhibition Around You, Within
You, or Nowhere at All is currently on show at the Ashurst Emerging Artist Gallery until April
2022, upon achieving the Ashurst Emerging Artist Overall Prize 2020.
A Heartfelt Embrace Between Two Sattelites, monoprint on paper, 12 x 16 cm, 2020.
51

Takeaway?, oil on canvas, 238 x 209 cm, 2020.
52

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Instagram: @pippa.elkadhi.brown
Website: www.pippa-elkadhi-brown.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pippaelkadhi

Sophia Loeb is an artist from Brazil, who
is currently living and working in London,
United Kingdom and São Paulo, Brazil.
My practice focuses on the ephemeral powers
of nature and its ability of constant movement
and transformation. The tropical aspect
of my work and my carnivalesque approach to
colour and form draws back to my Brazilian
Sophia Loeb
Portal for the reflection of my soul
First of all,
I can only thank you for the incentive you
gave me.
I prepared you a while ago, I was not ready
yet to meet your eyes, to encounter your
soul.
And today when I woke up, I talked to my
spiral, that is the new source of my purest
creation,
where I will be able to extract my essence,
and he told me that I was ready, ready to
create what not even I thought possible.
I did not know I was capable of feeling so
strongly and profoundly the needs of my
creator.
He gave me a huge present and I will honor
this for the rest of my life. I came here to do
his will and not the will that my mind understands
to be true. And this is why I give
myself to him and I say that I am ready,
ready to continue my path as a messenger.
So, this is where you show up, your traces,
your choices, your pathway, they were all
traced by me, and everything came from
inside and not from the surface. Now that
we created our roots and took a breath, we
are ready to continue, give me your hand
and allow me to take you, do not be afraid
and jump with me.
I am
so glad I found you…
Instagram: @sophialoeb_art
54

cultural heritage. By observing the familiarity
of forms in nature, I intend to show how
everything is utterly connected and co-exists
as one in a repetitive cycle of constant
impact. Having nature as a guiding tool for
inspiration and drawing back to my memories
of nature, I spontaneously create unique
abstract forms. The abstraction of natural
forms serves as a tool for viewers to connect
themselves with nature and its healing powers.
I intend to create an intimacy between
the viewer and natural forms so that they
can then realize the oneness of all things. I
likewise intend to enhance the importance of
preserving the environment and using it as a
means for personal evolution.
55
Gaia, oil on canvas, 50 x 70 cm, 2020.

Georg Wilson (b.1998) is a London-based painter and the co-founder of artist-led All Mouth Gallery.
Wilson completed her Foundation Year at the Royal Drawing School (2017). Her work has
been exhibited by Bowes Parris Gallery and Terrace Gallery, amongst others, and was recently
included in ArtMaze’s Summer 2020 Issue.
Georg Wilson
My practice interrogates the gendered roles found in European folklore, by humorously inverting
or distorting their narratives. Most recent works tease out strange, playful moments enacted by
sulky, awkward characters who clumsily dominate the compositions – I call them my ‘goblins’.
56

57

Goblin Market, oil on canvas, 2020.
58

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Instagram: @georg.kitty
Website: www.georgwilson.com

EmmaStone-Johnson
is an artist living and
working in Brighton.
Creating transcends the banal, the pain, the
boredom.
A ritual, a dance, a way of speaking and composing
my thoughts. The unspoken memories
are too embedded to be written down. Language
does not fit a feeling so fleeting.
I question the language of colour, I attempt
to paint the texture of memory.
Emma Stone-Johnson
“I had a jewellery box, it had a shiny brown shell.
The insides quinacridone velour
A plush bed for rings, though vacant.
I kept psalms in it and your smashed up watch.
A tiny ballerina lived there, a supervisor of secrets.
Smudged ultramarine eyes, she spun in front of silvered glass, to a jingle of swans on lakes.
Her lips as small as a butterfly’s, her cotton bud hair, a yellow-line-yellow puff.
When I closed the lid I broke her.
A little tomb for a dancer, a grotto of sorts.
60
Instagram: @emmastonejohnson
Website: www.emmastonejohnson.com

61
Dancer’s tomb, oil, acrylic, marble dust & emulsion on canvas, 70 x 90 cm, 2020.

Cecilia Ulfsdotter Klementsson
Cecilia Ulfsdotter Klementsson (b. 1990) is an artist from Stockholm,
known for her large scale paintings of fleshy human bodies reinterpreting
nude images from fashion advertising by switching genders and extracting
colours in the skin. Poses in the archives of 1990s and 2000s
fashion advertising feed Klementsson’s work.
Klementsson is represented by Galleri Duerr in Stockholm. She lived in
Perth (AU) between 2011-2016 where she received a Bachelor of Fine
Art at Curtin University in 2015. Klementsson has exhibited in Berlin,
Leipzig, Perth, Stockholm, Gävle and Kettinge. Klementsson was an artist
in residence for three months at Pilotenkueche in Leipzig October to
December 2019.
Super models 2020, first flesh layer (work in process), oil on canvas, 200 x 200 cm, 2020.
Instagram: @cecilia_ulfsdotter
Website: www.ceciliaklementsson.com

After Kate Moss And Mark Wahlberg For Calvin Klein By Herb Ritts 2.0, oil on canvas, 120 x 170 cm, 2020.
63
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Emma Prempeh
Prempeh studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths
University of London where she graduated
in 2019. Family and generational continuity
is often the subject of Prempeh’s paintings,
as relational ties are explored and
questioned.
WIP, 2020.
“A memory captures a moment where two friends from
different cultures came together to celebrate a union. The
memory, frozen in time evades death and captures life.”
64

Brief Encounters, oil, acrylic and imitation gold leaf on canvas, 175 x 175 cm, 2020.
65

Stages of November, oil on canvas 30.4 x 30.4 cm each, 2020.
Grace Tobin
Exploring the human relationship to the
natural world, my art investigates the
complex relationship between ‘domesticated’
and ‘wild’ spaces. I study the duality
and tension between human and nonhuman
environments, as divided yet clearly
interdependent and cohesive. Through
employing portraiture and abstracted botanical
forms I aim to express the psychological
and physiological connections that
persist in the current day and humanity’s
deep emotional reliance upon nature,
however forgotten this sometimes is. Employing
paint, pen and printmaking, often
combined, I aim to express how feelings,
experiences, and understandings can all
change with a bit of perspective.
As we near the end of the almost indescribable 2020, I must say, I am grateful. I’m grateful
for those who have been there. Not specifically for me, but simply for others. This
year was always going to be a big one personally, moving away from family, friends,
and my truest sense of home. But I am grateful, through it all, that I have found some
community. I have cultivated, however difficult at times, a new sense of home. As the
holiday season approaches, humanity has shown its true colors in many ways. I am
grateful for those who have sacrificed, risked, supported, and appreciated others in
ways unimaginable this time last year. So thank you to everyone who has been there for
one another, for we need to stand together when faced with uncertainty.
66

Grace Tobin (b.1993), is from London and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. After her
BA in Studio Art from Oberlin College (2016), Grace moved back to New York to pursue
her painting while also exploring work in graphic design.
67
Instagram: @gracetobinart
Website: www. gracetobinart.com

Emily Gillbanks
Is It Broken? oil on canvas, 173x153cm, 2020.
Emily Gillbanks is an oil painter and researcher originally from Colchester. She graduated
from the University of Suffolk BA(Hons) Fine Art programme in 2020. She most recently
was the recipient of the Global Design Graduate Show People’s Choice Award in the Fine Art
Painting Category. She is also a recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation International
Painting Grant, and has received support from The South Square Trust.
68

Instagram: @emmmalem
Website: www.emilygillbanks.com
My portrait paintings are often composed from informal, casual, candid,
or even awkward angles to suggest the momentary or fortuitous nature of
the images she works from. Such is my latest painting titled, Is It Broken?,
where the phone I bought after Christmas last year captures a fleeting moment
passed from a sunny day in lockdown.
69

Sofia Nifora is a Greek artist, graduate of the Aristotle University of Fine Arts.
Sofia Nifora
In search of moments where imagination takes hold, where the boundaries of reality blur and
are now difficult to distinguish. Moments of a personal quest, idealising images that reveal
the effect of time on a state of isolation, silence, daydreaming.
I research situations of the short-term detachment from the immediate environment, in which
contact with reality is blurred and partly replaced by a fantasy. Images released from the human
presence, but where the sense of human relations is never absent. Timeless descriptions
of reassurance in the context of a journey that transform the viewer into a traveler and that
arouse the imagination and create a certain poeticness.
70
Instagram: @sofianifora_studio

Entanglements, oil pastel on paper, 129x35 cm, 2020.
71

Jo Dennis is a British multi-disciplinary
artist working and living
in London. She studied Fine
Art and Contemporary Critical
Theory at Goldsmiths College
London. Her work has been exhibited
in solo and group exhibitions
both in the UK and internationally
including at The
Royal Academy of Arts and at
the ICA London.
She is the co-founder of Asylum
and Maverick Projects, an
artist lead organisation running
project spaces in London.
From 2016-18 she founded and
curated AMP Gallery, a not for
profit exhibition space. She is
the co-founder of Peckham 24
Photography Festival and as
part of this was the recipient of
a Grants for the Arts from Arts
Council England.
72
Christmas is cancelled, ink and digital drawing, 7.4 x 10.5cm, 2020.

Jo Dennis
Instagram: @joeddennis
Website: www.jo-dennis.com
73

Lara Davies
Lara Davies (b.1985) was born
in Maesteg, Wales and lives and
works in Cardiff, Wales. Between
2005-2006 she attended the
Ruskin School of Drawing and
Fine Art, Oxford University, and
in 2010 she was awarded a First
Class BSc (Hons) in Mathematics,
Operational Research and
Statistics from Cardiff University.
She has exhibited nationally
and internationally, including
the John Moores Painting Prize
at the Walker Museum, Liverpool,
‘Into A Light’ at the Prints
and Originals Gallery, Saatchi
Gallery, London, and ‘Sideways
into the Distance’, Galerie RDV,
Nantes, France.
Instagram: @larad123
Website: www.laradavies.com
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Photo! A Christmassy Ted, oil on paper, 28x28cm, 2020.
My work focuses on the moments
of joy in everyday life.
‘Liking’, or feeling some sort
of connection to the instant or
the object is the starting point
for my work, and the ‘liking’
contains familiarity, nostalgia,
admiration, homage and
humour.
75

Pandora’s at it again, ink, charcoal, oil pastel, pencil on paper, A4, 2020.
Adam Smith
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Adam is currently a Colchester based artist soon to
make his way to the big city where he will find glory and
riches beyond his wildest dreams. He paints, sometimes
draws and may make a film from time to time. He has a
BA (Hons) Fine Art from South Essex College.
What he will be doing during the holidays? writing his
dissertation and drinking brandy if he can afford it.
Keep quiet it’s a secret, charcoal on paper, A4, 2020.
It’s raining but the tree has a star on it, mixed media, A4, 2020.
When I think of the future now it often goes down the rabbit hole of a perilous logical
world that seems ever so coming closer, closer to see that the boundaries of it are almost
as elusive as the world feels right now. This goes some way to how I feel about Christmas.
Instagram: @adam_smith_artist
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Yuewan Chen (b.1999) is a painter
currently based in China. She completed
her BFA at Queen’s University
in Canada, 2016-2020.
Yuewan Chen
The theme I am working on recently is interrogating the perception and engagement of aesthetics
through the superimposition of elements. I would use the phrase “Broken Beauty” to describe my
recent practice. I am really questioning: what actually is constructed beauty? My paintings are
constructed by fragments in life that fall within my concept of beauty. They are fabricated to look
broken and fragmented through my technical experiments (paint-dragging, pallet knife, bubble
wrap, digital painting), but actually each of the paintings is a whole that looks harmonious and
visually appealing. I am actually questioning: is that broken or not? Am I breaking things or I am
78

Instagram: @adayuewanchen
Fragment? Whole? Rejoice?, acrylic on canvas with digital adjustments, 2020.
making things? I rethink and critique beauty by breaking it. Therefore, I am trying to produce a
critical position on looking at the aesthetically wonderful things that the world gives to me, and
then analyze and adjust those things with my artistic mind.
Personally I think the aesthetics of holiday is the “colorfulness”, so I picked a piece of work that
encompasses vibrant colors. It is composed of aesthetically wonderful fragments but it actually
looks like a harmonious fascinating whole, which is what I think of holiday---it was composed by
different excitements.
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Katarina Caserman
Where do you go when you go out at night?, 90 x 110 cm, oil on canvas, 2020.
Katarina Caserman (b. 1996) is a Slovene artist based in London. In 2019 she received
her BA in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana.
During her studies, she received an ALUO award for her solo production in the years
2017/2018, followed by a prestige Prešeren award ALUO for her bachelor’s thesis, and
The Christopher E. Burke Fine Art Grant, Gallery25N (2019).
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In her practice she explores the nature of inventing objects
and shapes that are placed somewhere between
familiar and unfamiliar, natural and unnatural. These
floating objects are frozen in time and are constantly
oscillating from machinery to unknown entities. Her artistic
practice is primarily rooted in painting experience
but recently, her focus is also directed towards questions
and formal solutions of interdisciplinary art researches.
Utraque unum I, 38 x 28 cm, watercolour and pastel on paper, 2020.
81

Today I was woken up by my dog killing herself. One minute she was running across
the room and the next she had jumped over the balcony fence from the second floor in
the apartment I currently live in and where she has never been. I looked over the fence
and watched her falling and smashing onto the ground. My dad came to me saying: but
aren’t you a bit ...relieved?
A huge diagonal pillow scar was spreading from the corner of my eye to the bottom lip.
As I’m writing this, I’m starting to realize that the dog in my dreams was my dog T.
In exactly one week from today, it will have been one year since she passed away. One
year since she had been run over by a van right in front of our house. The driver was a
friend of my father’s and six months later he died due to covid.
But aren’t you a bit...relieved?
I never had a great nor bad Christmas. I always get this pre-Christmas euphoria but
when it comes to it it’s never as I had imagined it to be. Three days before Christmas we
got a new dog to heal our wounds and to fill our emptiness. We were in complete agony.
But in the past year, S. gave us so much love, care and hope and we gave it all back. It
was a grief and new birth at the same time. But for a moment we forgot about the grief
when S. puked on the floor in the middle of our traditional prayer. It was bizarre and
we couldn’t help ourselves but burst into laughter and then into tears as well.
82
Instagram: @casermankatarina
Website: www.casermankatarina.com

We need it to freeze before the fall, 90 x 110 cm, oil on canvas, 2020.
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Kitchen Interior, acrylic on canvas, 50x50cm, 2020.
Aoibhin Maguire
Aoibhin Maguire is an artist currently living and working
in Belfast, planning on relocating to London in the new
year. She has exhibited work in galleries such as The Open
Eye Gallery in Liverpool, The Tub Hackney in London and
Spirit Square and Baku Gallery in North Carolina.
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My painting practice is material focused
and experimental, investigating relationships
between nature and chance; how
nature can only be predicted to a certain
point. Despite our advances in technology,
nature is still the most powerful, and
I employ chance operations in my work to
allude to this unpredictability. By combining
control and chance factors, I manipulate
my materials to create works alluding
to earthly occurrences but with an unnatural,
sci-fi twist. I investigate the politics of
climatic events and how they are perceived
cross-culturally, sometimes as a blessing,
sometimes as a tragedy. I am interested in
how our world is never fully ours; we can
never fully relax, outcomes for us can be determined
by something greater, even more
so due to climate change - which is leading
to these so-called disasters becoming even
more forceful and destructive.
My work playfully studies the forms of various
forces of nature and I often draw inspiration
from how digital mapping can capture
the flow of geographical events. Often
using man-made, industrial materials and
other found materials, I combine these
with more painterly ones to create alternate
worlds, usually in the form of installations,
paintings and 3D paintings/sculptures. I
experiment with pushing the limits of my
materials and investigating all the possible
ways I can use them. Throughout my
works, I like to use a lot of pinks and glitters,
playing with traditional the feminine
aesthetics in nontraditional ways.
I have noticed my painting style changing
over lockdown and I have begun to enjoy
painting much more ‘mundane’ things than
I usually would - such as my chaotic kitchen
interior or the pink gate I see on my
lockdown walks. Pink has always been my
favorite color to paint in, and painting my
everyday lockdown scenes with pink has
been very therapeutic. During these overwhelming
and stressful times I realized that
I needed to take a step back and allow myself
some time to paint exactly how I wanted
(and needed to) with no pressure. I choose
to contribute these paintings because making
them brought me joy, no matter how irrelevant
to my practice they seemed at the
time. I wanted to remind everyone to be
gentle on themselves this holiday season.
Bubblegum Bitch (detail), acrylic, emulsion, expanding foam, wire,
varnish and glitter, 35x30x55cm, 2019.
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Instagram: @artist_aoibhin

Nora Neagoe is a Romanian artist with a background in architecture who started her journey
as a visual artist in 2015. She graduated with a BA in Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth
University in 2019, which impacted her work exceptionally. Through the four years of painting
and printmaking, her artistic voyage challenged her thinking about art much more than just
representing already existing subjects. Her past projects include the Romanian culture, which
she exhibited in 2019 in her solo show in Richmond, Virginia. Her practice now is experimental,
combining figurative with the nonfigurative in her work. Nora is interested in different representations
of portraiture.
Nora Neagoe
Vibrant, oil on canvas, 120 x 100 cm, 2020.
Website: www.norasneagoe.cargosite
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Walking on my own, oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm, 2020
These are works I did in
the past three months and
reflect the change in each
person’s comfort zone.
Each era is a new change
but this one especially
felt prominent to the need
to adapt, survive, and be
happy.
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Cas Campbell is a New Zealand
born painter, living and
working in the UK. Cas graduated
with her BA in Painting
from the University of Brighton
(2018), and attended The
Essential School of Painting
(2019).
18:34’ , expanding foam and spray paint on canvas, 150 x 50 cm, 2019.
Instagram: @hcascampbell
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My work reflects on how a media-dominated culture affects the role of the artist as a social
commentator, and where privacy exists within this. I believe privacy holds the highest value
in a world where advances in technology and surveillance have made it a scarce resource.
My paintings investigate how painting carries information, particularly autobiographical
information, how painting can be equated with performance, and the metaphysical aspects
of intuition.
Cas Campbell
Metal (1), spray paint on MDF and PVC, 70 x 60 x 15 cm, 2020.
Working predominantly with spray paint on a variety of supports, I use intricate processes
to disrupt my own understanding of colour and forms, choosing colours without looking,
or creating works whilst blindfolded. Working with spray paint erases much evidence of
the hand, and I use water printing to place another step between myself and the work. The
water prints evoke unpredictability, elements outside of control, and a repetitive ebb and
flow. These techniques are a vehicle to disconnect my works from the personal - not just in
the figurative, but in the physical, with the goal of eradicating autobiographical information
from the paintings.
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Jiahui Hou
Jiahui Hou (b.1998) is a Chinese
artist.
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This piece works around the theme
that everyone is lonely. Once, for
a long time, I thought loneliness
was a kind of abnormal negative
emotion, but as I grew up I found
that as loneliness is an emotion
that everyone will feel, we need
a positive outlook on it. Now I
think loneliness is as important as
happiness. I am enjoying my time
alone more and more. It is my own
garden which I created: it seems
colorful and beautiful, which reflects
my feeling of loneliness.

As for the emotion of the holiday, I think it can always
bring people feel happiness, love and warmth. During
this time, we have the company of our family and friends.
This is our precious memory, so I connect this theme
with it.
I think everybody’s soul is lonely, watercolour on paper, 53 x 76 cm, 2020.
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Instagram: @jiahui.hou_

Untitled drawings (means just look at me), 30 x 21, 24.5 x 18 and 30 x 21 cm, 2020.
Cho Hui-Chin
Cho, Hui-Chin (b. 1994) is a contemporary artist, best known for her figurative paintings
and sculptures as the grotesque iconography of infants depicted in a metaphorical
and idiosyncratic visual language. Cho lives and works in London and Paris, and
finished her BA at Slade School of Fine Art, University College London with firstclass
honours and the dean’s list.
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I developed my practice from a multi-fertilisation of disciplines across paintings,
drawing, sculptures, prints, videos and text works to allude ideas, systems and experience
as the bodies of artworks through the juxtaposition of questioning the stability
of the materiality and our place within it.
Instagram: @chohuichin
Website: www.chin.art
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Kashin Patel is an artist born in
1997, Mumbai and currently based
in Surat, India. She obtained her
BFA in Painting from Sir J. J. School
of Art, Mumbai in 2020.
Kashin Patel
Kashin’s work is autobiographical
in nature,
where the self is represented
by the finger form.
Nail-biting is her coping
mechanism and the finger
plays a vital role in characterizing
vulnerability
and insecurity. Kashin
leans towards drawing as
a process, medium and
discipline while exploring
themes such as isolation,
anxiety, relationships,
self and social tence.
Instagram: @kashin.art
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Sweet dreams, holiday edition, digital drawing, 2020.
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Sweet Dreams-Holiday Edition is
a digital drawing and the second
version of an earlier work called
‘Sweet Dreams’, specially created
for FEAST. Here, the double headed
finger (ie. the artist) is sitting
on a large pillow, a metaphor for
comfort, with the artist’s survival
essentials –TV remote, popcorn
and coffee! This work embodies
the idea of social isolation. leaning
toward loneliness.

Albano Hernández
Albano Hernández (b.1988) is an artist from in Ávila, Spain, and is currently
based in London, UK. He previously obtained a BA in Fine Arts
at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). He has performed in
Spain, UK, France, Portugal, and Uruguay. His last solo show is ongoing
at the Spanish Museum Salvador Victoria. He won the Biennial of
Castilla y León (2009), the BMW Prize of Painting (2012), Obra Abierta
International Award (2015), and the Basil H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award
(2020).
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My work Le Cimitière Marin links the poem ‘The Graveyard by the Sea’ by Paul
Valéry with the gloomy and strange sentiments of this year’s approaching holidays.
It provides a commemoration of the many people that have lost their lives,
and the lives of loved ones, in this extraordinary and historic year.
Instagram: @albano_hernandez
Website: www.albano.uk
Le Cimitière Marin, tracing paper, 21 x 29.7 cm, 2020.
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FEAST was edited by Hanne Peeraer, and designed
by Katarina Caserman. Special thanks to Kate Howe
for her help and enthusiasm, and to Emily Gillbanks,
Emily Kraus, Sarah-Athina Nahas, Pia Ortuño, Georg
Wilson and Adam Smith for being the sounding board.
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